Japan flights a Christmas boost

Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive officer Rob Giason yesterday detailed the JAL Boeing 747 charter flights arriving from Tokyo on December 27, 28 and 31.

Each jet will bring 450 passengers with an estimated spend of $1500 per person over four nights.

Also coming during the December break are two more of All Nippon Airways/JTB Boeing 747-400 charters from Tokyo announced earlier this year. They will carry 646
people.

"This is a nice Christmas economic contribution during a period when there is a bit of a slow down in the domestic market," Mr Giason said.

"This is not to be sneezed at. We’ve had a tough 18 months and this makes it a little bit of an extra Christmas present for a few," he said.

Mr Giason said the flights would top up the Christmas-New Year period.

He said there was demand from the Japanese wanting to escape their cold winter for the tropics. Packages were being sold through wholesalers KNT, HIS, JALPAK and Yomiuri.

"KNT is distributing a dedicated brochure for the Cairns charter program in Osaka to take advantage of demand in western Japan," Mr Giason said.

He said there was a call for more services to Cairns during the December holiday period and TTNQ’s Japan general manager Harry Niihori had managed to secure the charters in addition to scheduled services into Cairns from Japan.

Mr Giason said he hoped it was the beginning of more charter flights from Asia.

"Three years ago there were no planes available to charter. Now there are aircraft available and it’s all about utilising these to our advantage," he said.

Mr Giason said there were now opportunities to add charter flights during peak holiday periods without cannibalising the scheduled services from Japan and China.

The region’s recovery of lost Japanese tourist numbers was boosted with four charters last month and this month with almost 1300 people arriving on the four flights, three of them school tours.